


Say You Will

by damnremus (malivolus)



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Canon Compliant, Engagement, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-19
Updated: 2015-07-19
Packaged: 2018-04-10 03:31:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,168
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4375529
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/malivolus/pseuds/damnremus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It happened just the way Remus would have liked.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Say You Will

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from Train's "Marry Me."

It happened just the way Remus would have liked: on the sort of morning in late fall where the morning air brushed your skin and left it bruised with cold and tea sat just perfectly in your stomach and the Sunday stretched in front of Sirius and he in unspent, wandering waves. Sirius hovered above him, his cock hard and wanting between the press of Remus’s ass, breathing out sour tea-stained breath, huffing out guffaws when Remus whined into his neck. They fucked and Remus screamed because he loved it, loved it, _loved_ it.

In the moments after, while they lay panting and grinning and still swimming in the other’s sweat, Sirius pressed it into his ear as he blinked up at their splintering ceiling fan. _Marry me, Moony_ , he murmured. _I need you, Moony, marry me._

And Moony ran. He fucking ran like a fucking coward — like he hadn’t spit in Death’s face every month since four years old, like he hadn’t felt his bones shatter and his skin melt and his mind smash into an animal’s kind, like those three words were the most painful things he’d ever had pressed to his body. He ran and he ran and he ran into the now-risen sun, on a Muggle London street in his knickers, gasping in his shape and hugging light poles to keep himself vertical on turns.

_Marry me, Moony._

And they were eight-fucking-teen, for Merlin’s sake. Old enough for the draft, but too young for a pint in America. Barely responsible for pissing in public, hardly able to operate the teller places in Gringotts, pants at love and lust and eating their vegetables. Remus just took up the courage to buy his own condoms last fucking month. They were eight-fucking-teen, fighting a damn war that cost more lives every ticking second, and Sirius wanted to get married.

***

When Remus returned to the flat, it was empty. His chest ached for the open space and gagged at the thought of Sirius tugging on his clothes in that way Remus loved so much and leaving the door unlocked for him. The air hurt his pores and every breath felt like the first he dragged after a transformation, when his lungs were still raw and newborn.

The bottle of spiced rum that they kept atop the refrigerator kept a lovely little watch beside Remus as he put on his favorite — their favorite — Sinatra album and fell into their squashy armchair to stew.

It wasn’t so much that Remus didn’t want to marry Sirius — quite the opposite in fact. Remus couldn’t imagine anything he would love more than telling the ladies in the flower shop that he was picking something up for his husband, than holding his hands to a fire and feeling metal sear a scar into his ring finger, than tearing his hair out trying to pull together money for taxes with his husband drunk and useless, tugging him to bed. Remus would love nothing more than to grow old with Sirius and nurse him and love him and fuck him and need him and have him and swear by his very name. But certainties were never so certain these days, not when Dumbledore had pulled Remus aside just a week ago and mumbled to him about a mission to the werewolf communities and the Prewitt brothers dead not even a fortnight and reports from the ministry and doubt seeping into everyone like leaves into tea and Remus couldn’t help thinking Sirius — his Sirius, so open and dependent and loving and strong — had only asked to marry him for fear of being alone.

At that notion, Remus tucked back his rum, settling into his ride to the moon and praying Sirius hadn’t wandered far, not knowing why he felt so anxious to face his anxiety.

***

“You left me.”

Remus started, his bottle tipping precariously in his grip. “Huh?” he mumbled, rubbing his eyes with the back of his knuckles.

“You left me in bed with half a boner and a proposal on my lips.”

Remus couldn’t meet his eyes. “I didn’t — ”

“‘No’ would have fucking sufficed, Moony.”

“You surprised me.”

“Most proposals are, but those never manage to destroy a man’s Sunday morning.”

Remus sighed, pain swinging at the back of his eyes and his tongue begging for another drop of drink. He placed the bottle on the floor instead.

“I — ”

“You know, James told me not to spring it on you. To leave notes and have you prepared. But, fuck, I thought: ‘No! This is Moony —the man I’ve been in love with for four fucking years! The man I lost my virginity to! The man I made love to not an hour before this conversation and left sated and smiling at me tangled in our sheets! I know him! He’ll be just fine!’” Sirius slumped against the wall. “I thought, at the very least, you wouldn’t run.”

Remus toyed with the edge of the arm. “You asked James about proposing to me?”

“Man’s done it before and succeeded. Figured he knew what he was talking about.”

Remus hummed and then let the space between them fill with silence like water in a pool. The clock ticked and Remus sweat and wondered if mass had been dismissed for the morning.

“Did he ask why?” Remus spoke, soft into the yet-morning.

“Why what?”

“Why you wanted to marry me.”

“Because I fucking love you? Because that’s what people in love do? Get married, have children, grow old on the front porch with rockers and canes?”

“I never thought you were one for convention.”

“Yeah, well,” Sirius shrugged. “Some things I like traditional. A little Sinatra here and there.” He motioned to the record player, still turning and scratching out notes. “You’re a traditional guy. I fucking like you.”

“Please tell me what’s traditional about being a bisexual werewolf with a degree in basic magical training.” Remus cracked a grin.

Sirius didn’t answer, but instead bit his lip and posed a question. “Do you remember the day before James and Lily got engaged? And we all went down to the beach? And Peter magicked the record player to work and you put on this song and I made you dance with me like in those awful muggle romance movies?”

Remus remembered.

“Will you dance with me, Moony?”

They moved together the way they always had, with an ease that had almost scared them the first time. It was a here-and-there-press-and-push-love-me-take-me kind of dance that hurt, hurt, hurt so good. It was every dance they’d danced before but the first knowing that they were not a James and Lily, not a Marc Antony and Cleopatra, but a Juliet and her Romeo.

“I can’t marry you, Sirius.”

“I know.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I know.”

“I love you, Sirius.”

“I know.”

“Say you love me too.”

“I love you, too.”

And it hurt but that, Remus knew, was okay. He’d hurt before and this was a hurt he could live with, too.


End file.
